


spectrum's end

by bossymarmalade (maggie)



Category: DCU, Justice League of America (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Reality, Gen, What If...?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-03
Updated: 2013-08-03
Packaged: 2017-12-22 06:24:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/909956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maggie/pseuds/bossymarmalade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>all j'onn ever wanted was a place to belong.</p>
            </blockquote>





	spectrum's end

**Author's Note:**

> standard foreword: if i have written something problematic/oppressive to a marginalized group that you find hurtful, please please please don't think twice about telling me. i will never spew hate at you, will never attack you, and i will always thank you and make the change.

He is, today, a seven year-old girl with peel-off nail polish and hair in two afro-puffs, watching the men as they drag the slow, reluctant river. Over and over they stretch and pull, while women stand on the banks, silently holding each other. J’onn thought there would be more crying, but the women all wear the same resigned look, the same sorrow settled over them like brittle yellowed tulle. Their feet in heels are handkerchief points sinking into the soft delta mud, and as the men finally pull the children’s bodies from the water, J’onn turns away and melts into the humid tangle of trees before anybody starts looking for the little girl who alerted them as to the fate of the three children. He turns slowly back to his true form as he walks, silently; he keeps moving until daylight, too unsettled to stop.

.

And here, now, he is a nondescript beige man of indiscriminate beige age, a person designed to blend seamlessly and leave no trace of his passing. J’onn is surprised to find that this form makes him agitated, almost angry; his own inner objection to the very concept of a … “neutral" form, a default template for a species as complex and varied as human (much less Martian, or any of the other near-unfathomably biodiverse life forms he has had the privilege of meeting) is anathema to him. It becomes a struggle to keep his beige man suitably nondescript. J’onn’s mind wants his nose to have a bump on the bridge, stretch marks on his belly, the tips of his fingers spatulate, gold flecks in the iris of one eye, a limp in the left leg. The people next to him in the crowd are shifting, starting to become puzzled, starting to notice, so J’onn hastily removes himself from the throng.

Perhaps he’s not meant to — no. No, he can’t think that. He can’t stand the thought of having to remain this way, for so long, forever, alone. J’onn goes back to the hotel and sits up watching the television, half-consciously sliding into a mimicry of each person on the flickering screen. He can do this. He can, he can.

.

"You can’t."

The hopeful smile J’onn hadn’t realized he’s been wearing slides sideways, melting down his face. “Beg pardon?" he asks politely. Perhaps he has merely misunderstood; Green Arrow is a man fond of colourful speaking mannerisms, some of which escape J’onn until further explained.

Oliver Queen shrugs, pressing his lips together in a sheepish expression. “I’m sorry, J’onn," he says, “you’ve been great in our impromptu team-ups so far, but you can’t join the League. We feel — that is, all of us, in consensus — that having an alien on the Justice League of *America* would send the wrong kind of message about what we’re trying to do here."

"I was under the impression that you were trying to help keep people safe."

Green Arrow hems and haws and begins an anxious tirade about communities helping themselves but his voice fades into background buzzing as J’onn confusedly looks at the other League members, who are present but remain silent while Queen, their appointed spokesperson for this task, flurries words all around them in a protective screen. J’onn does not touch the minds of others unbidden, but he can hardly miss what he’s seeing here: Superman, a son of Krypton. Hawkgirl, a warrior from Thanagar.

"— ‘cause all of us, see, we’re regular Earth folks. Just some of us got touched by meteor rock or mutation or magic rings, that kinda thing." Green Arrow coughs, his face red. He’s worked with J’onn more often than the rest of them, and they’d gotten along well, or so J’onn felt. Had he volunteered to break the bad news? Did the others — arrayed in a tight formation behind him, an unyielding and unwelcoming parabola — decide that J’onn would feel less excluded if the news came from a man he’s begun to consider a friend?

"I see," J’onn says quietly. Green Arrow winces and takes a half-step forward, but Green Lantern stops him, laying three fingers on his elbow. Easy familiarity, personal connection. Friends. The bitterness that was bubbling up inside J’onn dissipates almost as quickly as he scans the alien faces in that group, disguised as regular Earth folks. He can’t blame them for what they’re doing. They’re only terrified of being on this blue planet all alone, just as he is.

.

Sixty-eight years he has been here.

The hotel room has grown shabby around him. Wallpaper peels and blisters, the shadows cast on them by J’onn’s one grease-yellow lamp dancing sharply and unnaturally, inexplicably making him homesick. He gets that feeling more often, now, all he can do to call up meal after meal of Lebanese take-out from the tiny shop adjacent to the hotel, and one day the delivery girl asks in concern, “Are you doing okay?" as she hands over his food.

J’onn lifts his head, looking up from her canvas shoes for the first time in months. Her eyes are unusually far apart, her arms are chubby, she has misspelled the words written in blue pen on her shoes. She is not beige. She is regular Earth folk.

"Yes, thank you," he says, accepting the neatly tied package of shawarma and fattoush and giving her the money in exchange. “I … am doing okay."

The girl looks skeptical, but she does not have the time to dwell on the cryptic problems of a stranger, even a regular customer stranger. Humans have a more dysfunctional relationship with time than J’onn does; he has, in the course of these years, made earnest attempts to reconcile their racing hate of time with his own more gentle views of its soft, yielding blots. He has had mixed success.

J’onn takes the parcel of food to his tiny kitchenette. He unwraps it with his elegant black hands, watches hazily as they shift into freckled pale through to warm brown, finally greening through as he arranges the food on a plate. It looks beautiful, each element of the dish glistening with slick oil or fresh herb, and he leaves it to go sit in front of the television.

The news is drawing to a close, and soon the striped coloured bars span across the screen. J’onn looks at each band of colour, feeling that corresponding colour drain out of him, atomize into the still air of his room. He works his way across the top set of longer stripes, then the bottom row. J’onn breathes in black, and breathes out white, and when his eyes close, he is not sorry.


End file.
